Dr. Oz Says This is the Problem With Obamacare

Dr. Mehmet Oz tells FOXBusiness.com’s Jade Scipioni that Americans are lonelier than ever before and obesity is still a major problem facing one third of the population.

With rising premiums and major insurers pulling out of the state-based exchanges, the future of Obamacare has been front and center this election season.

Continue Reading Below

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says if elected he will repeal it, while Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton defends it and says under her presidency the priority would be to strengthen and improve it.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton told voters Monday that he thinks that the plan is “the craziest thing in the world.” He walked those comments back on Tuesday, saying "Look, the Affordable Health Care Act did a world of good, and the 50-something efforts to repeal it that the Republicans have staged were a terrible mistake.”

But, are they all missing the bigger threat that is sickening the country?

More on this...

“Health is an American problem, it’s not a partisan problem,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the host of ‘The Dr. Oz Show’ tells FOXBusiness.com.

Advertisement

He says the Affordable Care Act (ACA) wasn’t designed as a one-size-fits-all fix, but rather to make sure everyone was inside “the tent,” with access to quality healthcare. To have any real chance of curing the U.S. healthcare system, he argues, we must first tackle obesity.

“If we don’t address obesity in America, no healthcare plan is going to work. If we do address it, then every healthcare plan will work,” he says.

Today, more than one-third (36.5%) of U.S. adults and 17% of youth are obese in the U.S, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity was $147 billion in 2008, with medical costs for people who are obese to be $1,429 higher than those of normal weight.

“The biggest issue in America is that we have made it easy to do the wrong thing. We have high calorie foods that are readily available and inexpensive but are not nutrient dense,” says Dr. Oz.

“I think Obamacare was a very brave effort to include more Americans in the healthcare system. The problem with it though is that there was compromise required to get it passed, which limited its ability to address the quality of care and more importantly the cost of care.”